The CEU Weekly Interview with the President and Rector of CEU, JOHN SHATTUCK
In this exclusive interview with Rodrigo Avila B., the Rector answered questions about himself, his childhood and youth. The Rector recalled his early experiences as an exchange student in Damascus, Syria, and the lesson thought to him by his father during the crisis of
civil liberties that the US experienced in the 1950s.
From his policy maker experience and
civil rights lawyer perspective, he recollected his involvement in the Balkans and
his journey as international envoy to Bosnia. Also, John Shattuck discussed the US
foreign policy, and reflected on the current tensions in the US domestic politics,
acknowledging that “open society is facing a major contest around the world,
including in the United States”.
In the final part of the interview, the Rector talks about CEU as a laboratory for
critical thinking and for the analysis and
understanding of an open society.
PAGES 2,3 & 4

HUNGARY NEWS
Follow Up: What is New in
the Sirály Story?
The experiences of two CEU
students.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEU WEEKLY!

PAGE 5

PAGE 7

MEET THE CEU WEEKLY TEAM

PAGE 5

Why Did We Start The CEU Weekly?

PAGE 6

Everything is Fine

PAGE 6

Leading the Dead” –
The World of János Major”
An Exhibition by a CEU
Alumnus
PAGE 7

Student Tip # 75
Join The CEU Weekly's Anniversary Toast and celebrate with us with
some drink and cake! (The event will take place on Thursday, April 11,
between 6 pm and 7:30 pm in room 002 of Nádor 13.)

Hungarian Expression of the Week
Phrase: Jó annak, aki szereti.
Translation: Good for those, who like it.
Meaning: this saying refers to things that the speaker really dislikes.

FREE LUNCH!!! PAGE 8

the CEU Weekly
INTERVIEW

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

The CEU Weekly Interview with the President and Rector of CEU, JOHN SHATTUCK
John Shattuck, CEU‟s fourth President
and Rector is an internationally recognized human rights lawyer who has occupied several distinguished positions.
He started his career in the American
Civil Liberties Union and was Vice President of Harvard University from 1984
until 1993, when he became Assistant
Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (1993-98) under
president Clinton. In this capacity, he
was closely involved in restoring a
democratic government in Haiti and
played an active role in establishing an
International Tribunal for Rwanda and
the ex-Yugoslavia; he was also a key
actor in the negotiations of the Dayton
agreement that somehow brought
peace to Bosnia. Later on he was appointed as US ambassador to the
Czech Republic, and currently serves as
fourth President and Rector of CEU.
RODRIGO AVILA B: How does the John
Shattuck of today resembles the John
Shattuck that you imagined when you
were a child? If you could live again, is
there something that you would differently?
JOHN SHATTUCK: Well, when I was a
child I always imagined or hoped that I
would get see the world. I imagined that
the world was a really big place and until I
was about sixteen I never traveled anywhere beyond about three or four hundred
miles from my house. The world seemed out
there but it wasn‟t something that I had yet
discovered. And then, when I was a student,
I was given the opportunity to become an
exchange student, and the country in which
I became an exchange student was Syria.
Syria is in the news now; it‟s a tragedy
what‟s happening in Syria, but one part of
my high-school career was spent in Damascus. It was the first time I ever travelled
away from my home. It was an amazing
experience as you can imagine. I spoke
pretty much only French when I was there. I
didn‟t speak Arabic but I had to speak
French, because the family I was living with
spoke French. So I began to think, and this
was in a period when JFK was the president of the United States, which is a long
time ago of course, but he was really inspiring for young people like myself. So the
Page 2

decision that I made at that time was that I Srebrenica, in the eastern part of Bosnia,
wanted to really have a role in the world in had been taken over by Serb paramilitary
some way, travelling and seeing it.
and Bosnian-Serb forces, and the women
and children had all been essentially lined
Earlier, when I was even younger I was giv- up and taken into buses and send off to a
en a lesson about the world by my father. refugee camp in a place called Tuzla. And
My father was a lawyer and during the the men were left behind and no one knew
time I was a very small boy there was a what really had happened to these men.
crisis of civil liberties in the United States.
People were accused of being communists I worked with the International Committee
loosely. They were just charged this way for the Red Cross from Washington when I
because there was a fear of communism was Assistant Secretary of State trying to
during the Cold War. My father found that see whether they had any information
a woman that was running for the board of about where these men were, and they had
the school in our small town had been ac- some vague information that they were
cused of being a communist with no evi- held in warehouses, and they were basicaldence whatsoever. So he got quite con- ly made prisoners. Yet there were a few
cerned about that and started offering to stories that began to come out that maybe
defend her in public settings. And pretty something much worse had happened.
soon I‟ve found that he was being in some So as the Assistant Secretary for Human
way accused of being a communist. He
wasn‟t! He was a very conservative man in
many ways, but deeply concerned about
civil liberties. So I asked him: What‟s going
on here? I was about eight years old.
And he said: Look, people need to be
treated fairly and we need to get to the
bottom of the truth of every statement and
fact that‟s been offered. And it had a very
powerful impression on me.
So these two experiences, one traveling as
a high school student in Syria, and another
being told by my father what human rights
John Shattuck in Bosnia
and civil liberties and truth were all about,
really kind of gave me a sense of what I
Rights I asked for the Secretary of State to
wanted to be.
approve a trip for me to take to the region
and go to this refugee camp and start inR.A.: After this synthetic but inspiring
terviewing refugees and see if they had
introduction about yourself, let me go to
any information about what happened with
a topic that I have a particular interest for:
the men that had been left behind. When I
the Balkans. You were one of the key acgot there I got the names of several refutors on the ground in Bosnia, collecting
gees to interview, who I was told might
the information that provided evidence to
have information. This was on the airport
Madeleine Albright, the US Ambassador
tarmac, it was a hot July day, there were
to the UN, to raise awareness for the
some firing still going on the hills around, so
need of an international intervention in
it was a very uncertain circumstance. I met
order to stop the killings. Could you
these people, several of whom who told me
please recreate this journey for us?
extraordinary stories, several men actually
who told me that they had been with these
J.S.: This was a terrible time in the middle
men in Srebrenica, they had gone in these
of the catastrophe in the Balkans, that we
warehouses, they had been lined up with
now look back at it and we call it the Balother men and they had been shot with
kan Wars or the War in Bosnia, but it was
what turned up to be 7000 others.
a time when the worst genocide in Europe
>>>
since the Second World War had just oc>>>
curred. But nobody knew quite what had
happened at that stage. At town called

the CEU Weekly
April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

INTERVIEW

>>>
I was really the first person to have these in
person interviews, and I recorded all the
information and had it sent back by diplomatic cable to Washington and to New
York, to the UN where Madeleine Albright
was. This was really the first evidence of
what it actually happened. As it turned out
there were mass graves in the area and
7000 men had been shot. All unarmed Bosnian Muslims. This was really the most important piece of evidence of what had actually happened in the Town of Srebrenica.
As a result, the decision was taken by the
UN Security Council at the leadership of
Ambassador Albright to authorize a NATO
intervention to stop all this killing, an intervention largely by airpower at that time.
From there on we went to Dayton peace
accords which Richard Holbrooke, a larger
than life diplomat who I had the pleasure
working with, really led the effort to end
the war, to end the killing. The war ended
in November 1995, so about four months
later.
R.A.: Now I would like to ask you about
what is currently happening there. You
have spoken before about the forces of
integration. Do you find the integration
narrative to be still prominent? We know
that Croatia will be joining the EU, but
what do you foresee about the other republics in the region?
J.S.: I think that there is still a great deal of
frozen peace. There is peace, the warring
parties have been separated, but I‟m
afraid that the ethnic and religious divisions
have remained. In my own view it was unfortunate that the people who were most
responsible for these criminal acts were not
arrested right away and taken out of the
conflict area. Some of them ended up going into politics and it all ended up basically making this a frozen peace. I‟ve travelled recently in Bosnia, and today there
are many people, young people, and heroic young people, some of them CEU graduates who are working very hard to bring
peace to their countries and to enter politics. I think that the fact that Croatia is going into the EU is good. I think it is important
that at some point soon Serbia and Bosnia
also begin the process, and really get integrated into the EU, because I think that‟s
where they belong.

R.A.: Now I would like to turn our discussion to US domestic politics. At a first
glance the US politics seem to be today
very polarized. Do you see any worrisome elements, or it is just a contemporary representation of the US pluralism?

good direction where more participation
and more diversity is ultimately going to
lead to new forms of open society, new
forms of democratic governance. We are in
a very transitional period of the world right
now, but it is an exciting period. And CEU is
J.S.: Well, that‟s a very good question. I intellectually and morally in the center of
think open society is facing a major contest all of that.
around the world, including in the United
States. Certainly open and free speech is R.A.: There is a discussion going on
an important element of Open Society but about banning the use of drones and tarso is democratic politics, that is to say the geted killings without due process on
ability to solve problems peacefully in a American citizens. Given your civil rights
regular political process. In many places lawyer perspective but also your policy
that is more and more difficult, for a whole making experience, what could be a solulot of complicated reasons including the tion to this issue?
proliferation of new media and instant
communications, and the fact that political J.S.: This is one of the most important issues
leaders have to react almost instantly to for international security and for US foreign
everything that takes place. There are very policy. The use of drones and mechanized
good developments in the sense that there warfare with little human intervention is
is more participation, more engagement, probably inevitable, but it‟s disturbing and
particularly through media elements, but I seductive because you can imagine as a
think that given the economic crisis there is president you don‟t really want to deploy
a lot of uncertainty and fear and insecurity, hundreds of thousands of troops. President
and that sometimes leads to insularity. I Obama is in the process of disengaging
think we see that here in Hungary, we see from Afghanistan and from Iraq. At the
that in Central Europe, and to some extent I same time he makes use of these mechathink that the polarization of the politics in nized warfare machines. What is seductive
the US relates to this larger phenomenon.
about the drones is that you can operate
them without the engagement of forces on
I think that the election of Barack Obama the ground, and you can probably limit the
and particularly the coalition that re- amount of civilian damage that‟s done in a
elected him to office last year in 2012 is a setting where you‟re doing counter terrordemonstration that the United States is truly ism or where you‟re fighting a war. But, in a
setting where they‟re completely unregulata pluralist and diverse society. We are on ed either by international law or domestic
the verge of having a majority-minority law, I worry that we‟re entering into a
society; the majority of people in the US world that is really going to be lawless.
are otherwise to be considered minorities. And drones are certainly not going to be
In some ways this mirrors CEU, so I would the sole purview of the United States. Other
connect this with CEU. This is a very positive countries and even other shadowy forces of
the world, including terrorists, might end up
development, but also diversity scares peousing them.
ple sometimes and makes them feel that
their own kind is under some attack. Right My own view is that there needs to be a
now I think that we have in the politics of high degree of regulation brought to bear
the US a polarization which results from on mechanized warfare, and I am glad to
some elements in the political system, par- see that there is now some debate beginticularly those who were labeled the Tea ning in the United States, including within
Party or those who are against any kind of the Administration itself as well as in the
government action for social benefits. These congress about requiring a much more
groups are acting in part out of fear, and elaborate system of checks and balances
out of their loss of status and standing in a against the use of these kinds of mechasociety that is becoming increasingly a ma- nisms.
jority-minority. But I am optimistic; I think
that the world is heading in a good direc- The final part of the interview, on Page 4
>>>
tion, the United States are heading into a
Page 3

the CEU Weekly
INTERVIEW

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

>>>
There are some examples of regulation
that have worked in the field of electronic
surveillance, which has been a standard
security tactic of all governments for a long
time. United States, and I was involved in
this when I was a lawyer for the Civil Liberties Union, enacted a statute in 1978 called
the foreign intelligence surveillance act,
and it required a court to oversee the intelligence wire taping that has been done by
security agencies involving American citizens and requiring some kind of judicial
warrant oversight, so it would not be simply
the decision of a few bureaucrats or even
the President alone. That‟s not a perfect
solution either. The critics of that solution
say that it‟s not really very effective oversight but the policymaker says that we
should make sure that we develop systems
that are workable, because if we try developing systems that are unworkable then it‟s
likely that something else is going happen
that could be even worse.
This is a disturbing future part of the 21st
century that we‟re looking at. And it‟s not
just the United States, but it is this whole
mechanized conflict and warfare that I see
developing. Here as an international lawyer I am a very strong advocate of developing through the United Nations and
through treaty mechanisms a much better
system of regulating and limiting these mechanical devices. That‟s not going to be
easy, but there have been other systems of
international law that have been developed in the past and I think that we should
be able to do this, and the fact that there is
a debate now going on in the United States
about this is a good sign.
R.A.: Now let’s switch a bit our discussion to CEU. When we had the chance to
interview Gerhard Casper, President
Emeritus of Stanford University, and I
asked him about the challenges in leading a University he replied as follows:
“The University is not politics or the market
place. It has to march to a different drummer. The search for knowledge must be carried out by critical analysis according to
standards that themselves are subject to examination and reexamination. All this calls
for a lot of “gardening” every day. Getting
out the weeds when they are still small and
thinking very hard about what new trees to
plant. Gardening is the real challenge.”
How does John Shattuck carry out this
gardening?

Page 4

J.S.: I think that CEU is a remarkable laboratory for critical thinking, which is the most
important element of an educated human
being in the 21st century. We live in a
world where there is so much information
constantly flowing at us and we need to be
able to analyze and navigate this world
because otherwise we fall prey to propaganda and various kinds of misconceptions;
misconceptions lead to conflict, conflict
leads to war. Educating people at CEU to
be critical thinkers, to understand what this
diversity of information is about and be
able to separate fact from fiction. There
are facts in the world, everything is not relative. There is truth to what happened in a
particular situation. We need to be able to
understand how to get those facts, and beyond that we need to analyze them and to
make judgments about them, These judgments need to be based on some fundamental principles, in our case principles of
open society, democracy, tolerance, and an
honest relationship with history so that we
can come to grips with some of the terrible
things that have happened in our own countries.
All of that is part of the education that we
need to have here. The mechanisms of how
to do this, how to engage in a university
that does a great deal of research, we
need to engage in cross disciplinary analyses. There is no one field that is ever going
to solve the problem of the war in Bosnia.
You need to have historians, sociologists,
political scientists, and gender studies and
policy people, and all the other elements
that we have here at our university. We
need to make sure that we‟re promoting
that we don‟t allow particular fields to become isolated. We also need to connect the
theory of what we‟re studying with the
practices of the real world. I think we are
doing that more, certainly through our
School of Public Policy. At the bottom it‟s all
about the search for truth.

R.A.: Do you think that there is a conflict
between promoting an open society and
the pursuit of the truth?
J.S.: In some superficial way there may well
be. But I think what the university needs to
do is understanding, analyzing, and getting
at the roots of what are these values of
open society, recognizing that they are under contest, and looking at other systems
and challenging ideologies. We shouldn‟t
be in a bubble; we should be open to all
elements of truth. That is really what CEU
should be about.
R.A.: As you know, the CEU Weekly is a
student and alumni initiative now in its
third academic year of existence. The vision we have is that in 2031 the CEU
Weekly will not only celebrate the 40th
anniversary of the CEU, but also the 20th
of its own existence. I would like to ask
you if you could share a message for the
students that will be running the newspaper in the years to come.
J.S.: Well, I think that they have a big job,
to understand all the various parts of this
university: Who are the people out there?
What are their lives like? What brought
them here? What are they inspired by?
What kinds of professors are teaching
them? Where they‟re going with their lives?
This newspaper is about the journey of
CEU, and to have this journey captured by
a newspaper run by the students is a tribute both to the students, to you Rodrigo
who put this together and others who work
with you, and to the university that you‟ve
decided to write about. You bring it to life,
and I think that‟s what the students in 2031
will have to think about. I think it‟s great!
You can watch the full 30-minute interview with
John Shattuck, on our You Tube channel

http://www.youtube.com/TheCEUWeekly

the CEU Weekly
April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

CEU WEEKLY ANNIVERSARY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEU WEEKLY!
It has been a year since I have joined the CEU Weekly team.
Looking back at my work as a member of the Editorial Board and
then as Editor in Chief, makes me feel proud of all the accomplishments of the newspaper in this academic year: the increase of the
newspaper‟s popularity and circulation, the increase of visitors on
our blog, and the support gained from the University. All these
things helped us to consolidate the newspaper and to prepare it
for the next academic year. These accomplishments would not
have been possible without the efforts of my colleagues in the
Editorial Board, and without the support and guidance of Rodrigo
Avila B.

On this Thursday, April 11th, the CEU Weekly invites the CEU
community to celebrate these accomplishments and its third anniversary. On this occasion we would like to thank our readers, colleagues, friends and donors, all of whom have inspired and made
possible the existence of this newspaper.
I am looking forward to seeing you all there!
Florin Zubascu
Editor in Chief
The event will take place in at 6 PM, room 002, Nador 13

Cartoon by Eriksson

MEET THE CEU WEEKLY TEAM
Justina Poskeviciute - As
someone who has some experience in the field of journalism and simply enjoys
writing, I was very glad to
have discovered that CEU
had its own student-run newspaper. For me personally,
The CEU Weekly has provided a great platform for pieces of various topics: from international politics to CEU community to events in
Budapest itself. When I think about it, it is absolutely incredible how diverse our content is: an
interview with a prominent Hungarian politician
can be in the same issue with a satirical piece
on Valentine‟s Day while an article on the present conflict in Mali can be published right by a
photo report on a dance party in Budapest.
That is why I think The CEU Weekly is so important for our community: not only is it another
outlet for our skills to develop, but also for our
diversity to show. Also: no-one is as knowledgeable as we all are together,
right?
Olya Pushchak - The newspaper at CEU is like a sharing
pot of opinions – always
gives you a chance to say
what you think, and filling this
“pot” with content was always an interesting
and prolific process. What I like the most about
being a co-editor at CEU Weekly is a special
feeling one might have every second week
while turning pages of a super - fresh issue of a
paper that had just arrived from the printer.
And even if the issue wasn‟t ideal or had unnoticed typos, holding that paper in my hands
always felt good. I‟m glad to be in this great
team of creative and dedicated people.

Razi Zaheer Saidi - I am a
pursuing the MBA program at
the CEU Business School. I am
originally from India but have
worked and lived all over the
globe in the last 14 years.
Working at the CEU Weekly
team was a great experience as every comes
from a difference background and culture. The
CEU Weekly team represents the very Ethos of
the University, where students from all over the
world come together to make a melting pot of
sorts of Cultures, Experiences & Knowledge.

cles before to a youth camp‟s journal, however
The CEU Weekly is my first experience in working in an editorial board. Through this work I
am learning a lot and at the same time I am
part of a community as well.
Maryna Shevtsova - I always
liked writing but it never went
further than millions of posts in
my personal blog. So, when I
joined CEU community, I thought
it might finally be a great opportunity to do something more
serious and public than write for narrow circle
of my friends. Except of great journalist experience, what you get at the CEU Weakly team is
extremely warm and friendly environment, lot
of interesting discussions, tons of inspiration –
and then, sometimes we have great parties! I
guess I enjoyed the most writing articles about
student life at CEU and, of course, I was really
pleased whenever I could write something related to Gender studies.

Julia Michalsky - Unfortunately, I have only managed
to join the CEU Weekly team
in the second semester. I enjoy
writing about things that go
along with my interests and do
not necessarily deal with the
topics I am dealing with during
my classes. In my opinion, a student run newspaper is essential for any university to offer students a common place to express themselves
Erik Kotlarik - The CEU Weekly
and highlight the things that are important to
embodies more than anything
them. Personally, I want to write more about
else the spirit of the Central
student-led activities as well as places and
European University. Each of its
events outside of CEU to encourage our readers
members comes not only from
get involved in things other than their MA topics.
different country, but also has a
In addition, I hope to recruit a more diverse
different background. Lawyer
group of contributors for the CEU Weekly dur- works here with environmentalist, person from
ing the next academic year.
gender studies with historian. Not only cooperating together, overcoming obstacles together,
Agnes Kelemen - I am studying but most importantly, creating something tangiJewish Studies and Nationalism ble. In the era where everything is dematerialStudies at CEU. Previously I grad- ized and ephemeral, each issue of the CEU
uated in history. I joined The CEU Weekly is palpable and lasting. . Therefore I
Weekly because I found it an am glad that my voice have become part of its
exciting task to inform the interna- story. Although to be honest, all that work, all
tional CEU community about what those meetings and extra deadlines were someis going on here in Hungary. I wrote some arti- times a real pain in the ass…

Page 5

the the CEU Weekly
THE CEU WEEKLY ANNIVERSARY

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

Why Did We Start The CEU Weekly?
Because CEU had everything to have a newspaper: a vibrant community, a plurality of voices,
the regular practice of debating and contrasting points of view, a critical mass always
willing to engage in a respectful dialogue. CEU
provided the ideal structure to have a regularly
issued newspaper: the only component missing
was agency, and it was in that context that in
the academic year 2010-2011 this project
started. And it started with seven people sitting
on a table discussing the need of having a regularly issued newspaper within CEU. We were
meeting every week discussing how should the
newspaper be: printed or online, how often
should it come out, how should we fund it, how
should we name it, which sections should it have,
who would be responsible for what. It took us
two months to figure out some answers to these
questions, and finally, on April 20 of 2011 we
publish the first issue.
We are doing this because we think is the right
thing to do, but we are also doing this because
of our interpretation of CEU: I think I speak on
behalf of the team when I say that CEU is to us
like a Republic, and founding and running this
newspaper was and is our way of been virtuous
citizens contributing to the deliberative democracy within the community to which we belong.

Everything is Fine

There is a short story in which a little boy
has to answer the question „What do you
want to become when you grow up‟ as a
school assignment. His answer is simply the
word „Happy‟. When the teachers tell him
that he did not understand the assignment,
he argues that the teacher does not understand life. To be honest, I always hated the
story and I still think that it belongs to a
MySpace profile of a mediocre teenager,
rather than to the introduction part of any
piece in any newspaper, especially the CEU
Weekly and especially anything written
by… well, me.
The truth is that I started to relate to the
little boy in the story. It begun back in Hungary, as a response to the question „What
on earth do you want to do in Indonesia for
Page 6

Rather than a personal project or initiative, we
are trying to build a lasting institution. Our vision is that in 2031, The CEU Weekly will celebrate not only the 40th anniversary of the University, but also the 20th anniversary of its own
being. This is a democratic project, not a job for
money, and we have established in our constitution that no individual financial gain related to
the editorial work is nor will be allowed. Free
and respectful debate is our belief.

to receive an average of 10,000 visits per
month. We have covered CEU activities from
the Student Union to the CEU Sustainable Campus Initiative, the project CEU Cares for the
Homeless, the Gala Dinner and the Spring Ball,
the Vagina Monologues and the life in the
dorm. We have interviewed personalities ranging from the President Emeritus of Stanford University or a Member of the European Parliament to a student in the Roma Access Program
or Mihail, the Cloakroom Guy.
Central European University is a great laboratory: it provides an ideal setting to practice an
active citizenship. It is not only a place to gain a
deeper conceptual and analytical understanding of the forces moving history, but also a
place where the members of the community can
exercise an active participation in the matters
relevant to the community. I hope many more
CEU members will continue to launch wellthought and lasting initiatives, and that their
stories will be also reflected in this newspaper,
which is nothing but a reflection of CEU‟s richness and diversity, a humble tribute to the
greatness of this University.

Up to April 2013, in our third academic year of
existence, the newspaper has produced 32
issues (all available at http://issuu.com/
ceuweekly), printed almost 11,000 copies, published content by students and alumni from over
40 countries, and established a network of
alumni correspondents in places like Egypt, Gaza, Bosnia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The web- Rodrigo Avila B.
site (http://ceuweekly.blogspot.hu/) has started Founding Editor of The CEU Weekly

a whole year?‟, and it gradually became
much more apparent when I had to face the
„What on earth are you doing there?‟ questions.
When I was first asked to write something
about my stay in Indonesia, I had a lot of
ideas. I am full of funny stories, stories that
make you think, and unexpected fun facts
about life and people in East Java. Maybe
in the next issue I will write some of those
things, and the next piece will have hats of
Boyolali policemen in the title. But not this
time. Why? I took my time (something I
have a lot of here) and looked back on
myself one year ago in the beginning of
April. I was a wreck. Honestly, CEU got on
my nerves: I spent most of my time in the
library or home alone, full of panic and self
-loathing. I could not deal with pressure –
mostly imagined pressure. My social life
dropped dead, I couldn‟t sleep well... and
although my world did not revolve around
CEU during the last twelve months, I know
most of you will be able to relate to at
least some of these symptoms. It sucks.
Now, after spending seven months on various islands in the Indonesian archipelago, I
am actively being happy. While learning
the language, riding more than 15 000
kilometers on a motorcycle and making
friends from around the world, I learned a
great deal about how I should be living. It

is now clear to me that I had my priorities
wrong: I should have enjoyed these experiences first, and gone to CEU after. But this
is not the message that I want to tell you
this time. I want to tell you that everything
is fine, and is going to be fine. The world is
full of wonderful people and they are right
there around you – don‟t miss the opportunity to have the good times with them. It
turns out that the teenagers on MySpace
and the motivational chain emails were
right after all (well, at least when you are
looking at it from this little bubble that is
heaven on earth Indonesia).
Do I know what I want to be when I grow
up? Hell yes! I want to remain exactly what
I am right now – happy.
Wow, this looks kind of pretentious. I think
my old self would just start worrying about
what people will think about him after
reading this :)
The author is participating in the Darmasiswa
Indonesia program, writes a blog in Hungarian (indormation.wordpress.com), gave up
drinking (kind of), and sometimes talks about
himself in third person.
Tamás György - CEU Alumnus and former Managing Editor at The CEU Weekly

the the CEU Weekly
HUNGARY NEWS

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

Follow Up: What is New in the Sirály Story?
The experiences of two CEU students.
As you might have read in the previous issue of The CEU Weekly, Sirály was evacuated following the discovery of a WWII
Soviet grenade in Király utca, after a series
of conflicts between the capital‟s mayor‟s
office and Marom Cultural Association. The
mayor‟s office let Marom work in Sirály
until the 3rd of April, until the end of Passover, accepting the request of the Jewish
Community. However, not even the last
week of Marom‟s work in Sirály could pass
in complete peace.
On April 29, Easter Friday evening (and
during Passover), while a drag-show was
taking place in Sirály, 20-25 policemen
invaded the club asking for identity documents from everyone inside. They did not
answer questions regarding the aim of their
action. Some CEU students were present as
well. Diana and Chris kindly agreed to
share their personal experiences from that
evening with our readers.
Diana Labiris remembers that
“The show had wrapped up and there was a
bit of a dance party on stage. I was just sitting in the audience. A man came on stage to
announce that 10 police had arrived and that
we could leave if we wanted or stay and get
checked. He encouraged us to stay, to make
the point that we were allowed to be there,
but I was a little concerned because I didn’t
have my documents. So my friends and I
tried to leave, but the police had blocked the
doors and were checking everyone’s IDs. It

An Exhibition by a CEU
Alumnus
On the occasion of The CEU Weekly‟s anniversary, I would like to introduce something
that the CEU community can be proud of.
The curator of a very interesting current
exhibition of the city “Leading the Dead” –
The World of János Major” is a CEU alumnus, Daniel Véri. He is an art historian, currently a PHD candidate, and graduated as
a master of arts at CEU‟s History Department in 2010.
János Major (1934–2008), graphic and
conceptual artist, was a major figure of the
Hungarian neo-avant-garde and a member
of the so-called IPARTERV generation that
emerged in the sixties. This exhibition is
dedicated to one characteristic segment of
his oeuvre: works connected to death and
demise; the world of tombs and cemeteries.
Major‟s works presented in the exhibition

was a bit of a tense wait—about 10 minutes
or so—but they ended up just asking for my
birthdate and letting me leave. The police
were just like you normally find them on the
street—quiet, stern. A little menacing, but
probably just by virtue of how big they are.
Didn’t seem to want any trouble. The audience was pretty confused and a little scared.
Especially those of us who didn’t have our
documents! We didn’t really know what they
wanted with us so we were just a little concerned about what they might do. The performance wasn’t really disturbed, per se. But
it was really disappointing that the night was
cut short. It was pretty clear that the police
wouldn’t have been there had it not been a
drag show—it obviously had something to
do with the politics of the thing. That was the
most upsetting part for a lot of people.”
And Chris Zivalich, who himself was one of
the performers told us:
“I went to Sirály to perform drag. The entire
show went fabulously, though I was frustrated with the police disruption. The police officers themselves are not as much to blame as
the political climate in which leftist activism is
routinely monitored and disciplined. The audience as a whole might have been annoyed
with having to stand outside, whip out ID
cards, and adhere to ridiculous “security”
measures, yet this did not stop us from enjoying ourselves. The party went on after the
police invasion with as much energy, smeared
make-up, drunk dancing, and unapologetiare organized along the lines of those specific traumatic events that influenced the
artist‟s oeuvre deeply: the Holocaust
(Major‟s father belonged to the victims), the
revolution of 1956 during which the young
artist was touched and artistically inspired
by the vision of hanged men on the streets
of Budapest. And a third trauma that gave
inspiration to a series of Major‟s work during his life (although he did not witness it),
the Tiszaeszlár blood libel of 1882, a major encounter for assimilationist Hungarian
Jewry with Anti-Semitism. Thus, Major‟s art
builds upon specifically East-CentralEuropean, Hungarian and Jewish experiences.
Besides being a neo-avant-garde artist,
Major was interested in documentation and
also worked in projects dedicated to safeguarding medieval statues found in Buda
in the early seventies (his drawings based
on the remnants help the visitors to imagine

cally queer sass as ever before!”
After the end of Passover, Marom Cultural
Association ceased its activity in Sirály.
István Tarlós, mayor of Budapest, and the
leaders of Marom agreed that Marom
would empty the club by April 30. Ádám
Schönberger, president of Marom nonetheless reassured everybody that they will
continue their cultural activity as soon as
possible, although they have not yet found
such an appropriate place as Sirály. It is
clear that the mayor of Budapest – following the Hungarian government – is fighting
hard to suffocate every youth club that can
be suspected of giving space to leftist or
nonconformist activism. However, in numerous youth clubs of Budapest there is civil
resistance to such authoritarianism. István
Tarlós succeeded in closing Tűzraktér last
year; now Sirály is no longer rented by
Marom. It is getting harder to find a place
for activism outside the current political establishment, and associations like Marom
are increasingly having to search for support from within the private sphere. Nevertheless, students and young intellectuals (not
only leftists, but those who are simply open
for reasoned dialogue) will undoubtedly go
to new clubs as well to further discussion
and debate.
Agnes Kelemen
With the contribution of Diana Labiris and
Chris Zivalich
the original state of the statues). He took
plenty of photos in the Jewish cemeteries of
Hungary, some of which are presented in
the exhibition. They do not provide a simple documentation of the past, but – given
their titles – sometimes an ironic interpretation as well.
Nevertheless the value of János Major‟s art,
and of the current exhibition, lies not merely in its artistic virtue, but in the fact that
individuals like Major help us to understand
Eastern Europe‟s history during Socialism –
especially the history of the sixties and seventies – better and more deeply.
Agnes Kelemen, Nationalism Studies
With the contribution of Daniel Véri,
alumnus, History Department
The Exhibition is Open until 13 April 2013,
at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts,
Barcsay Hall,
1062 Budapest, Andrássy street 69–71.
Page 7

he Weethe CEU Weekly

THE WEEKLY PUZZLE

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

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Welcome to Train your brain!
Here you have a new challenge – a Festive
word-search. We hope you easily manage it!
The task is to find the hidden words from the
list below. The trick is that there is one extraword in this list. Find out which one and send it
to us.
celebrate, anniversary, newspaper, birthday
present, welcome, share, drink

The person who will first send the correct answer on ceuweekly@ceu.hu will get a FREE
LUNCH voucher at the Dzsem Cafe!!!
The Weekly puzzle by
Olya Pushchak

YOUR CORNER
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About the CEU Weekly
This is a student-alumni initiative that seeks to provide CEU with a regularly issued newspaper. The CEU Weekly is a vehicle of expression for the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that integrate CEU‟s open society: free and respectful public debate is our
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